As the global tertiary sector began to shift towards online learning, one technology – Massive Open Online Courses (better known as MOOCs) – promised to change how we thought about education.
Since they emerged in 2012, these affordable online courses have offered opportunities to explore information on just about anything students could want to learn — from selected bachelor’s degrees to learning a new language.
With the only barrier to entry being a device and a wifi connection, they enable prospective students to interact with the best possible content from the best schools, supported by the best professors, with just the click of a button.
So why, a decade later, haven’t they changed the game in education?
Why MOOCs aren’t working right now
In 2012, the “MOOC hype” was palpable as leading universities, including Stanford and Harvard, began rolling out their very own online offerings.
While these courses attracted tens of thousands of “students”, very few stuck around long, according to MIT researchers, with a 2012-2013 study found that an overwhelming 95 per cent of students dropped their online courses before completion.
Even though online learning is currently stronger than ever, recent data finds the completion rate of MOOCs continues to sit dangerously low, hovering between seven and 10 per cent.
While some students have expressed satisfaction taking MOOCs, a vast majority say they left their course due to “a lack of live teacher engagement”.
MOOCs are structured using a series of pre-recorded, video-based, self-paced classes. With no live instructors facilitating the content, students aren’t given a straight-and-narrow path from beginning to end.
This format makes the modern MOOC essentially an internet version of a book, leaving institutions also grappling with accreditation, assessment, and intellectual property rights.
A 2020 study by nine named authors published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America tried to combat these dwindling completion rates by implementing “interventions” at the front of MOOC classes.
Described as “one of the largest global field experiments in higher education”, the study covered more than 250,000 MOOC participants over a two-year period.
However, after trying tactics such as self-regulation interventions, long-term planning prompts and social interventions, researchers could only boost student engagement for a week or two, but “not final completion rates”.
Untapped potential
At their full potential, however, MOOCs have the ability to democratise future higher education by expanding learning beyond campus grounds and into the homes of eager learners.
While many still dismiss the courses as an educational afterthought, experts predict the MOOC industry will only grow in the near future.
According to the “Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) Market – Forecasts from 2022 to 2027” report, the industry is expected to go from 900 million in 2022 to more than seven billion in 2027, marking a sharp increase in demand.
A cheaper digital education alternative would come as a relief to students feeling the pinch, as the country currently suffers through a housing crisis and the cost of living continues to rise.
In 2023, more than three million students owe more than 74 billion dollars of student debt, with universities having already seen a dip in applications after an increase in study fees earlier this year.
Some Australian universities already see the potential MOOCs offer students. The University Of Queensland, for example, already holds two courses that sit amongst the top 25 of Class Central’s most popular free periods of all time.
If tertiary institutions can find a way to improve the completion rates of MOOCs, the coming years could see the fruition of the ‘digital education revolution’ we were promised more than a decade ago.
